Gone
by PersianFreak
Summary: Not all stories have a happy ending... Stand-alone one-shot. I cannot stress this enough.


_**Gone**_** by PersianFreak**

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Charlaine Harris. Please don't sue.

Rating: T

A/N: All the Swedish spoken in this story was translated thanks to various sites. I tried to cross-check in order to ensure that it was all _correct_, but apologies in advance if it isn't. Reviews are welcome.

I squeezed my eyes shut and wished vehemently for the memories to stop.

I was so tired, so hollow and raw from the pain and the hurt and the confusion. Pam told me I had become an empty shell of myself and I agreed with her in the small part of my head where things still made sense.

Not much had made sense in the weeks since...

Another tear escaped, rolling warmly down my cheek.

_Eric smiled at me, his blue eyes glowing with life, and clasped my hand as we walked into Fangtasia. It has been so long since he has had a free night, so long since he has been allowed the luxury of not being the King of Louisiana and just being Eric, being my husband. Wanting to visit his old business, the place where we had met and the place where so many pivotal moments of our relationship had taken place, was something we have put off for so long that Pam has begun complaining that we have become a self-absorbed couple, a notion that Eric laughed off before promising his Child that we will visit, if only to make sure she has not run the business into the ground._

I buried my face in my hands and rubbed roughly at my eyes, as if they were at fault for the tears I was shedding. Maybe if I'd let my shields drop for one second, maybe if I hadn't spent decades and decades perfecting the art that was shutting down all the voices from my head, maybe things would have ended differently. Maybe I would have tensed in the final second, or found the strength to call out a warning, squeeze his hand, even, so that he would have been alerted.

But I hadn't.

_My arm was around his waist, his around my shoulders, and my senses were sharp enough to feel the stake as it was thrust into flesh, cracking bone and tearing into muscle. I felt the rumble of the wood as it lodged itself into my husband and turned around, eyes wide, just in time to see Felicia break the man's neck and drop him to the ground much the same way that Eric was now falling. My fingers tightened around the weapon and yanked it out, and yet he fell, dropping to the floor on his back, eyes wide and unseeing._

_ "No," I shook my head. "Eric, no. Baby, please don't. Don't leave me." His eyes flicked to my face, his always-pale complexion already greying with the inevitable and my voice cracked. "Eric, please, I love you more than anything, stay, please stay..." I was sobbing, my body wracked with the overwhelming grief that crashed down on me and broke down my mental shields so I could catch his last thought, his last unspoken words to me._

_ "Min Älskade, jag är ledsen." My crimson tears splashed onto his shirt, staining the impeccable white. Why wasn't I enough? Why wasn't my love enough to keep him anchored?_

_ "Jag älskar dig, Eric. Stanna hos mig." I whispered. I love you, stay with me, I repeated in my head and his lips turned upwards at the sound of his beloved speaking his chosen tongue. I hunched over him, clutching at his shoulders and pressing my lips into his one last time, pressing him into me even as his body slackened and then began to fall apart as I held him, the embodiment of all that I held dear disintegrating into dust right in front of me. My grip on what used to be my husband did not lessen and I hung onto his clothes, his favourite suit the only tangible remainder of my Eric._

I curled into myself and wept, remembering the vast emptiness that I had threatened to drown in as I was carried away to what used to be his office, crying out that I wanted him, that it couldn't have been true, that _my_ Eric wouldn't have left me so readily. Grabbing so violently that I left red marks on my own skin, I held the metal ring hanging around my neck in my hand and stood shakily, silencing my own grief as I left what had been our room, travelled up the multiple sets of stairs and disarmed the alarm that gave me access to the roof. My face was wet again, but I was no longer shaking, no longer trembling with the reality of my lover's final death as I waited for the sky to lighten.

I closed my eyes and never let go of my beloved's token of his commitment to me even as the sun seared me, setting fire to my flesh, and still I made no sound.

I sighed and it was carried away by the breeze.

And I smiled as I burned.


End file.
